Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Irony of Teachers' Day.

This might sound silly and stupid but there is no other way I could find to resolve something that seems so simple but yet hurts me deeply. I am one way of stepping into the mean word of reality. In fact, I am weak at facing it as I'm unable to use my reasoning well to control my emotion. I used to cry a lot when people scolded me and when I grew up till this age, I manage to make sure that those feelings of intimidated and sadness would not overwhelm me again. Up until now, when I am already wearing my name as a teacher, I face quite a lot of new challenges but they are never a hindrance to me. I would always be able to stand on my feet again, motivate myself by telling that everything will be fine. No matter how much and how bad people talked behind my back, saying that I am such an irresponsible person just because I was hospitalised and was not able to mark the English papers, no matter how much the parents have harassed me, no matter how lazy and rude the pupils are, I could still move on and think hardly about ways to help the pupils to score in their examination. Today, just because of one incident, I started to doubt myself whether I would be surviving in this teaching line. I blamed myself for taking things lightly. Just so for this incident, I was scolded badly by a parent because of tiny little matter. the clinic class for the poor achiever pupils happened to be off the schedule. I didn't realise that I had taken more than the time promised to teach them. It was partly my fault to be blamed for starting the class late and for ending up late but still I couldn't accept the fact that there were parents who are angry when we did not meet the time. It was something out of my hand because the celebration went off late. I could see that he was angry because he had troubled himself by searching for his son all over the place till he wanted to make a police report. Pity the son because I know he was so eager to learn English. He confessed to me that when I started to teach him, he begins to like English and he begins to understand better with me being his teacher. Of course to me, it is such a great motivation to teach him and I would not mind to use up my free time to teach him so that he would have better understanding if I do a personal tutoring to him. Yet, when I think of his father's saying " kalau jadual tak tetap, macam mana ni? Tak boleh ker semua cikgu menepati masa seperti mana yang dijadualkan? Kalau macam ni, susah la mak bapak." I was struck with silence and truly, deeply hurt at that moment and I could not believe what he said. My motivation to teach shattered at that very moment and my emotion started to stir up. Plus, I was facing another tough situation which made myself wanted to take MC for two weeks. My friend was saying that she was so unlucky when she came to this school as nothing good has ever happened to her. On Teachers' Day, she whined that she didn't like the present from other teacher during the exchanging present session, saying that getting a stove would actually show a sign that she could not transfer to other school. At the same time, the present that she should give to other teacher was stolen by a student to give to other teacher made her cry without stop. It was the first time I saw her like that and it added more tangles to my already unstable emotion. My head was spinning and I told myself that everything will be back to normal once I had a good sleep and with one day worth of holiday I can make my emotion back to zero. I was wrong as that matter was still lingering in my head and the tears that I had tried hardly to hold finally broke down and I could feel my chest was in pain, as if somebody was stabbing it. I could not accept few things from that parent's attitude. Firstly, how could he be so meticulous on such good thing about that? It is not like I was asking his son to do something so wasteful. I was doing the clinic for the sake of his son and I did not even ask any penny for that. It was supposed to be the day that I should relax myself because it was after all Teachers' Day. Plus, with my health condition like that, I made myself forget about the fatigue due to a restless day. I was willing to sacrifice my precious free time just because I wanted to help his son. Until today I could not gain the motivation that I used to have before this. I tried to reason myself, telling myself that there are other teachers who experience worse thing than what I am facing now. I feel like stopping the whole idea of wanting to have clinic classes for the pupils just because I feel that not only my effort but other teachers as well are not being appreciated.